Immigration Bill

Baroness Ludford Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I react with as much puzzlement to the Minister calling the government amendments “technical matters” as my noble friend Lady Hamwee did when the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, called her Amendments 78 to 91 on licensing, “technical amendments”. These are about people’s livelihoods, whether it is a licence or closing premises. It seems an extraordinary use of Executive power for an immigration officer to be able to close premises—a shop or other place of work—under the conditions that have been cited. I cannot see how this complies with the rule of law. There is going to be no transparency in this process.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to speak in support of the amendment tabled by my noble friends on the Front Bench. Indeed, I, too, am delighted that this is now my party’s official policy.

The right to work—or, perhaps more accurately, the right to be allowed to undertake paid work—is a human right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and incorporated into human rights law as part of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which recognises,

“the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work”.

After the Second World War, TH Marshall wrote that in the economic field, the basic civil right is the right to work. More recently, in 2007—long before I came to this place—the Joint Committee on Human Rights described the denial of the right to work as part of a deliberate policy of destitution, in breach of asylum seekers’ human rights.

The all-party parliamentary inquiry into asylum support, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Alton—of which I was a member—talked about how asylum seekers who are not able to undertake paid work lose skills and are unable to provide a role model for their children, and about the impact on their self-esteem, self-confidence and mental health. All this has a damaging effect on their children. A Freedom from Torture report on poverty among torture survivors states:

“Many questionnaire respondents, and most participants in client focus groups, highlighted the importance to them of having permission to work while their asylum claim is decided as a means of supporting themselves and being self-reliant. Indeed, the lack of permission to work for asylum seekers was a major theme of discussion and the key change that focus group respondents called for, although they also recognised that many torture survivors”,

may not be “well enough to work”.

A letter to the Independent at the end of last year asked why asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK. It pointed out:

“We have skills to contribute: some of us are doctors, nurses, carers, teachers, builders. But these skills are wasted and deteriorate while we wait for a decision on our asylum applications. We want to contribute to the UK economy and to be part of this society”.

Much of government social policy, whichever party is in power, is premised on the principle that paid work is the primary responsibility and the most important contribution that people make to society, summed up in the rather tired mantra of “hard-working families”. Why should asylum seekers be denied the opportunity for a whole year of joining the happy ranks of hard-working families in the labour market—and even then joining only on very restrictive terms? The evidence shows that this impedes integration. The Home Office’s own research shows that delayed entry into the labour market can cause problems even when refugee status is then granted, leading to high levels of unemployment and underemployment.

We have already heard about what happens in other European countries. My understanding is that most of these countries have fewer applications for asylum than are received in the UK, which does not support the argument that providing the right to work acts as a pull factor. The lack of impact on the number of applicants is confirmed by a study of OECD countries. Indeed, after our last debate on the issue, the then Minister acknowledged the paucity of hard evidence to support the Government’s case. Moreover, as Still Human Still Here argues, it is not very likely that economic migrants would draw themselves to the attention of the authorities by making an asylum claim, so that they might be able to apply for permission to work in a whole six months’ time.

The danger is that asylum seekers will end up in the shadow labour market, facing the kind of exploitation we discussed earlier in the context of undocumented migrants. Indeed, can the Minister say whether, if they do take paid work, they could be caught by Clause 8 —criminalised for working illegally even though they are legally in the UK awaiting a decision on their asylum claim?

I fear that Governments are often timid with regard to the rights of asylum seekers, for fear of public opinion. However, surveys by the IPPR, and the British Social Attitudes survey, show that there is public support for allowing asylum seekers the right to work. The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, in an inquiry into destitution among asylum seekers a few years ago, said:

“Overwhelmingly, giving asylum seekers the right to work was the favoured solution identified”,

by those who gave evidence.

As has been said, we have debated this issue a number of times in your Lordships’ House, even in just the five years that I have been here. Since the previous time we debated it, the financial position of asylum-seeking families has worsened because of the savage cut in asylum support for children. So the cost to them of not being able to undertake paid work is all the greater now, with damaging implications for their mental and physical health and that of their families. I urge the Minister to take this amendment away and think about whether the time has not now come to concede this most basic of human rights.

[Baroness Ludford]

I, too, welcome the support of the Labour Party and its conversion to this cause. It is hugely important and significant. All the considerable benefits of a change in policy have been cited, and I do not need to enumerate them. They are so powerful, and there are only benefits—there are no costs, quite honestly, associated with this policy, except possibly a political one. That is no doubt what the Government fear. So I want to propose a rebranding exercise: to position this not so much as the right to work as the obligation to work—a requirement to work, except for asylum seekers who, for reasons of age or health, cannot do so. We could reframe it in those terms, as we do in the field of welfare. Indeed, a Liberal Democrat policy document from two years ago did exactly that. Why not talk about an obligation on fit asylum seekers to use their skills to benefit themselves, this country and the taxpayer? I think that you would also see a different approach and a different perception from the public, as well as, one hopes, from the Government, if that rebranding were to take place.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

My Lords, first, I welcome all those who now support so vigorously and enthusiastically the right of asylum seekers to work after, say, six months. They have such potential. I know they are not asylum seekers but a third of the doctors and consultants in the hospitals and half the nurses in north Wales are not of Welsh extraction; they are from overseas. We rely on each other. If you go to the hospitals in Liverpool, the same story is told. We work together; we are one world. We have a responsibility towards each other—a responsibility, I suggest, to help everybody, wherever they are from, to reach their potential and to contribute as much as they can to the well-being of the whole community.

I am not going to speak at great length—I would be very unpopular if I did. In any case, everybody else has said what I wanted to say. It is wonderful that we are in an atmosphere of wanting this policy to succeed.

I will say just one thing. Last night I was at a meeting where we spoke of the children in the camps at Calais and Dunkirk. At Dunkirk there are no facilities, and we have all seen the pictures of the children tramping in the mud, which in places is a foot deep. One contributor last night said, “You know, they haven’t had any education for 12 months. They haven’t had any schooling. They are missing out”. Many of those of Arab extraction who are coming to the UK—people who speak the languages of other nations—could become the teachers who help this new generation, and in helping that new generation I am sure we will be doing something to build the kind of world that Lloyd George talked about. He once said that he wanted to build a country fit for heroes to live in. Let us build a world fit for children to live in. We can do it in this Bill by adopting amendments such as the one that is proposed here.